The good news

Firstly, the good news. The app has been re-designed to match Google’s other iOS apps, and so it looks nicer and more modern. In particular, the text is much bigger, so it’s easier to see the numbers that the app generates. It also supports the larger screen size on the iPhone 5 so there’s more room to see multiple logins.

You can also rename logins to make them easier to identify, and re-order how they appear so that the ones that you use the most are at the top.

The bad news

And here’s the major caveat. It wiped all of my settings. When I updated, none of the logins that I had added were there and I had to go and re-add each one. I use Google Authenticator to manage 7 logins (Google, WordPress.com, this blog, Dropbox, Evernote, App.net and my Microsoft account) so this took a while.

Some sites were easier to sort out than others. Google had a ‘I have a new phone’ button, for example, which just meant that I had to re-scan the barcode. For others, I had to completely disable and then re-enable two-factor authentication to be able to re-add the authenticator.

Hopefully you will have been sensible and ensured that you have some backup codes stored somewhere, or can fall back to using SMS or another authentication method. Thankfully I did, so I’ve not been locked out of any of my accounts. But it is frustrating.

All in all I like the new version of the Google Authenticator and would recommend the update. But set yourself some time, just in case you get the same problem as me, and have to set all of your accounts up again.

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About me

A geek from Yorkshire who writes about his Mac, iPhone, social media, computing in general and anything else that takes his fancy. Has a computing degree and works in an admin/marketing job at a university, and lives with his wife and baby daughter in a small town in a valley.

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